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For the last week there have been fiber techs on our street doing something in the area1, including late last night, when our internet went out. We expected to wake to it working again but it's still out and we can't get it serviced until tomorrow. I'm helpless and consequently pissed. My node is offline and my value plan cellular service on my 6 year old phone sucks so I'm in the office on my "day off."
I immediately thought of getting Starlink as a backup but they aren't available yet at my address. My only other options afaik are getting a second wired internet provider or a cellular hotspot. I'm tempted to go with the cellular hotspot as it's less likely to share outages, but I'm not very confident in cell service in my area (it hasn't gentrified as fast as the homes have seemingly).
Do you have backup internet? Cell or wired? Are there other options I haven't considered?

Footnotes

  1. When I came home last week there was a tech in our backyard. No phone call. No warning. Just a dude in a safety colored vest in my backyard. He said he was from the internet company which I called to confirm. But wtf. Dude is going to get himself hurt.
Yea double wired sucks if anything takes down lines (or power in many cases) in the area... Starlink is great for that reason alone, and the back-up plan is only $10/mo which you still may be able to register for even if your area isn't eligible for full residential scale service
Perhaps a high gain 5G antenna you can put on the roof would make cellular at least serviceable for backup? If you can get a pole high enough for line of sight it could make a big difference... but that's probably going to cost just as much as Starlink equipment and cell towers are often impacted by power outages too.
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87 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Mar
I always find your advice reliable on this stuff. I'll probably go with a mobile starlink setup once I make sure I can position it somewhere on the property properly.
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type in your address to see your options
Starlink is available in my area but I live in a multi unit apartment
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We have starlink as a backup. Before that we used a physical hotspot device from T-Mobile that worked pretty well for short outages.
I'm feeling your pain, here in Puerto Rico it always pays to have a backup, and backup for the backup 😅
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64 sats \ 4 replies \ @gmd 30 Mar
I thought the whole point of starlink was that you can use it anywhere... I'm surprised they're restricting purchases by home address.. maybe you can register using a friend's address?
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It looks like this restriction is just for their residential service which they probably assume will use more data. I can get their Roam service no problem.
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if Austin is not covered by their satellites maybe useless anyway, maybe better double check somehow
I just checked their coverage map... look's like is "sold out"! Whatever that mean...
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31 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 30 Mar
What do you mean with:
Whatever that mean...
A connection does not have infinite bandwidth, especially if it’s a satellite
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need more satellites
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If you start getting antsy for... Alternative options, you could get a directional antenna and point that to a receiver (or a chain of receivers and transmitters) to a family member or friend's house.
Given you can still text, meshtastic is not a solution here. You're probably looking for video streaming right?
Could leech off of a public library and download enough entertainment to keep you busy for a while.
There's this thing called a "Virtual mailbox". It's a snail mail address with a company that scans your mail in for you. Ever since my Alt-Net series I have thought of setting one up for people to submit web requests to and then I would mail the response from the Internet server they were trying to reach. I haven't because I don't know if anyone would care to use it, but anytime I experience internet issues I think about how nice it would be to mail in a mass video download request (from YouTube or something)
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I have fiber and cable internet connections. I have a box for them to connect as inputs. It's "load balanced" to the extent that if one input dies, the other input just picks up the load.
I get nasty emails from the cable company about not using my connection, so I need to unplug the fiber connection so the cable company can see I'm active.
They are always cutting each other's lines and causing outages around here.
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I knew someone had to be doing this. That's cool!
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Starlink also offer a mobile option, maybe called Roam, and you pay when you need it. It's also cheaper...
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Oh good point. Maybe I should look at the mobile option!
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I pay for a Mint Mobile annual plan. I've used the 5G hotspot a few times when my fiber internet went down. Fortunately it doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's nice to have something to fall back on. Still, it's a pain in the ass to get it all switched over... it's certainly not anything graceful. I'd be interested in finding something else that's more automatic, but until it becomes a problem again, I probably won't- the 5G hotspot works good enough for now.
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I would say starlink but it depends on location and keep is as a backup only for $100/month gets expensive quickly. Wish Elon got "backup service" option when you turn it on when your primary is down, otherwise, one would need 2 ISP setup with router that supports it (e.g. tp-link ER7206, or others)... I feel ya, have sometimes similar issues, then I just hop in the truck with my laptop and go to Starbucks...lol
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It might be time to chance your cell service so that you data actually works in the place you live. Would it make that much of a difference to chance services?
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20 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Mar
It might. I'll probably give it a shot.
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Sorry, l meant change. But it depends where you use your cell service more, work or at home. You might have to make a compromise when choosing because of this!
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15 sats \ 1 reply \ @economy 30 Mar
Have you tried using T-Mobile, which has a partnership with Starlink?
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Switching wireless carriers isn't something I'm used to "trying" but it might be worth switching. Also, I wasn't aware of their partnership - that's pretty cool.
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I have been using a LTE Modem as a backup for a while. In a failover setup, in case my main fiber connection goes down...
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